San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Iwo Jima bids adieu to U.S. flag
Items culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago:
1993
June 23: Victor Willis, former lead singer for the Village People, appeared yesterday in San Francisco Superior Court to defend himself against charges that he beat and raped a woman after a one-week relationship. According to court documents, the woman reported being attacked by Willis after an argument about $500 that the woman allegedly asked Willis to invest for her. Yesterday, Willis recalled that he met the woman on a rainy Tuesday night in October outside a San Francisco bar. But, he said, he “never had any physically violent contact” with the 39-year-old woman. Willis, 42, denied receiving any money and said he did not know how the woman suffered the bruising and black eyes documented in police photographs. Appearing in court in a white button-down shirt and tie, Willis barely resembled the policeman-suited ’70s singer whose songs “Macho Man,” “In the Navy,” and “YMCA,” sold millions in the United States and abroad. The Village People were more famous for their attitude than for their music. The six-member group parodied heterosexual male culture by dressing up as cultural icons. One was a construction worker, another an Indian, others a cowboy, a soldier and a biker. After group members became openly identified as homosexuals, Willis, who was married, was asked to leave, he said in a 1988 interview. Willis and actress Phylicia Rashad, who became the nation’s favorite mom while playing Mrs. Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” divorced in 1979. Willis could face up to 13 years in prison if he is convicted.
1968
June 27: Iwo Jima — The national flag of Japan — the hinomaru, better known to a generation of American fighting men as the “meatball” — flew yesterday atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima, where 4950 GIs died to wrest the island from Japan 23 years ago. Raising the flag symbolized the return of the little central Pacific island to the Japanese, along with about 30 other islands. It replaced the Stars and Stripes in a simple ceremony during which the American military commander handed over the installation to his counterpart in the Japanese Self-Defense Force. At the same site in 1945, one of the most famous war photographs in history — the picture of four Marines hoisting the American flag — was taken by Joe Rosenthal, now a member of the Chronicle staff.
1943
— Chronicle Foreign Service June 30: The conditions of overcrowded Negro quarters in former Japantown are not likely to be cleaned up in wartime. This was the admission yesterday of Federal Housing officials who outlined three steps to alleviate overcrowding among non-whites in the area. 1) Reliance on city health, sanitation and fire regulations to bring pressure on owners of Japantown property to correct sub-standard housing. 2) Absorption of incoming non-whites to war jobs in federal public housing near their jobs. 3) Siphoning off of those residents of the area employed on war jobs by referring them to housing near their jobs. “Many of the non-white residents in the colony are believed to work in the shipyards of the East Bay and Marin County,” said Robert Rumsey, statistician for the National Housing Agency. “By referring those who are employed in such projects and living in Japantown to housing units close to their jobs, we can help the situation here.” “The housing units being erected at Hunters Point should be adequate to accommodate the incoming nonwhites,” he added.
1918
June 27: Mrs. Robert Cords shot and perhaps fatally wounded her husband in their apartments at the Fairmont Hotel at 6 o’clock yesterday evening. Four shots were fired, all of them taking effect. Alarmed by the reports of the revolver, which echoed along the corridor of the fourth floor, Clerk William G. West hurried upstairs. A moment later Cords came walking over to Manager Baker’s desk. He was smoking a cigar. “I am shot pretty badly,” he explained coolly. “I think you had better get me quick to a hospital.” He pulled back the right lapel of his coat as he spoke and showed a shot hole, with blood oozing from it over the right cigar pocket of his waistcoat.” “I am hit in the arm, too,” he added, and raised his right shoulder in a shrug. He was holding his cigar in his right hand. Baker hurriedly summoned Clerk F.A. Robinson from the adjacent desk and had him take the wounded man to St. Francis Hospital.
On the way, Cords swooned and Robinson thought he was dying. Meanwhile, Clerk West had reached the Cords’ room. One bullet had smashed the doorknob. Mrs. Cords was found in sitting in the bathroom. She was holding a revolver, which she pointed at them. “We hurriedly closed the door and went to call the police,” explained West later. “As we were leaving, she called us back and handed Clarke the revolver. She then became hysterical and said all sorts of things.” “I shot to kill! I shot to kill!” she kept on repeating. “I hope I killed him!”
Johnny Miller is a freelance writer.